The present invention relates generally to surgical guidance and tissue differentiation, and more particularly to surgical guidance and intra-operative pathology through endo-microscopic tissue differentiation.
The therapy of choice for most malignant and benign tumors in the human body is the surgical attempt aimed at total resection of the tumor with preservation of normal functional tissue, followed by radio-chemotherapy. An incomplete resection of a tumor with remaining infiltrative growing cells increases the risk of recurrence with adjacent therapies, decreases the quality of life, and elevates the risk of mortality. Diagnosis of tumor and definition of tumor borders intra-operatively is primarily based on the visualization modalities, where for example a surgeon takes a limited number of biopsy specimens which are later examined through histopathology performed as quickly as possible to provide proper feedback during the surgery. Unfortunately, intraoperative fast histopathology is often not sufficiently informative, due to freezing artifacts, mechanical tissue destruction, and tissue architecture alteration during the sample preparation. In addition, sampling errors are another source of inaccuracy. Optimal surgical therapy, which is the combination of maximal near total resection and minimal injury of the normal tissue, is only achieved if the surgeon is able to identify intra-operatively the tissue cellular structures and differentiate tumorous from normal functional tissue.